


and desecrate

by kyaku



Category: Fantastic Four (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different Powers, And I Must Scream, Body Horror, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Isolation, Lowkey Eye Trauma, Not As Scary As The Tags Make It Sound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 11:12:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5583640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyaku/pseuds/kyaku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>my arms and legs, <b>they get in the way</b></em>
</p><p>--</p><p>AU. After the quantum gate accident, they all get Ben's powers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and desecrate

**Author's Note:**

> here's my contribution to this impromptu tragedy potluck. just remember, you drove me to this.
> 
> re: the warnings - the body horror is largely canon-typical but I'd say that the most extreme scenes are about on par with the likes of district 9, if you've seen that movie. also note that there's no gore or pain involved in said scenes, the trauma is largely mental.
> 
> as usual, expect minor edits in the days to come.

Reed wakes up and there is nothing.

He's crumpled on the floor of a dark room, and the accident comes back to him in a rush. He struggles to get up but soon finds that he can't. _Spine injury,_ Reed's brain provides, _paralysis_ , and panic runs through him like an electric shock before his body clarifies its continued existence. No, he's still there – he can feel it, if he concentrates. He's largely trapped under the rubble and rendered immobile, but nothing seems to actually hurt. The absence of pain proves more disorienting than comforting.

Reed takes inventory and tries to remain calm. He can't see much of anything, but as far as he can tell, his lower body is buried in debris. One arm's twisted under him, and he pulls at it experimentally, trying to release it, but his limbs feel like lead and he's forced to give up. The other's free, and he drags it up to meet him. The gesture is unexpectedly exhausting.

There's something covering his eyes, distorting what little vision he has. Laboriously Reed brings his arm up to brush it away, but his hand meets an unexpected barrier. He can barely make out the shape of his arm in front of his face, a too-big blur in the dark.

Reed tries again, and again, but the results are the same. Whatever's blocking his eyesight is stuck to his face. He tries to tug it loose, but his fingers just skitter away, unable to get a grip. Distantly he notices that the sensations are wrong; there's no give of flesh, no warmth, just a set of corresponding pressures where his hand meets his face. The panic comes back and Reed digs his fingers in, heedless of the pain he might inflict, and when he yanks at what's blinding him there's a sound like concrete scraping glass. He claws at his face in a fury, feeling nothing, seeing nothing, that twisted sound ringing in his ears anew with each attempt.

At some point, Reed starts to scream.

 

\--

 

The man tells him that they're locking the cell door for his own safety, but Johnny knew the line was bullshit even before he saw his "protector" trembling.

Johnny _gets_ intimidation, see. Back in racing, being able to shake the other guy up was just another skill in his arsenal. Even the best could falter if sufficiently spooked, so of course it was helpful to be the scariest one in the room.

These days, between "eight feet tall" and "composed of 100% quasi-volcanic rock," Johnny's pretty sure he's winning on that front. He hasn't seen the file the labcoats are putting together about his "condition," but he doubts they're lacking for material.

Johnny's fingers taper into points, faceted and almost sharp. He flexes his hands, watching the bright black stone bend and not break, and knows his days behind the wheel are over.

Mind, so are his days of everything else. It's not like the people in charge are bending over backwards to give him any answers. Quite the opposite, actually. Everyone else seems happier keeping him in the dark. Even when they're _there_ , observing him, they keep on talking _at_ him, instead of _with_ or even _to_.

Johnny hasn't seen Sue since the accident, and he only knows secondhand that Reed and Ben are even alive. He's seen his father a few times, on the other side of the glass, but Dr. Storm's never allowed in. It was a relief for the first few days, that Johnny could put that confrontation off, but then it occurred to him that his father had never looked _angry_. Just afraid.

Johnny's already served his time as the latter. The former's gotten more appealing with each passing day. And the labcoats had seemed pretty interested in finding out exactly what he could do.

Shouldering the door off its hinges is easier than Johnny expects it to be. It hits the wall on the other side hard enough to send up a cloud of plaster fragments. Someone from security runs up, makes motions like she's trying to usher him back into his room, but Johnny ignores her. He doesn't even have to shove her aside. Once she sees he's not going to stop, she just gets out of the way.

The farther Johnny gets, the less pleased people seem with his little excursion. Distantly, one of the scientists kicks up a racket, shouting that _somebody's got to stop him_.

Johnny huffs out a breath and keeps walking. He'd like to see them try.

 

\--

 

When the military steps in, they approach Ben first, saying it's because he'd acclimatized so easily after the accident. They tell him that he's leaps and bounds ahead of the others, and wonder at how much he's accomplished so soon.

Ben doesn't tell them that the adaptation hadn't been a choice. He doesn't tell them that he'd been woken up that first night by the sound of Reed crying from somewhere far away, that everything else had become secondary in the face of _help me, please, I'm begging you,_ help _me._ He doesn't tell them that after breaking out of his cell and barreling through the corridors, he'd broken the door open to find his best friend trying his damnedest to rip out his own eyes.

Of course Ben had learned to move fast, with that as his inspiration. It's a secret he'd rather keep.

Allan words his proposal carefully, and on the surface it's all very simple: with the benefits of the quantum gate made so suddenly tangible, the government is looking to put their new acquisitions to work. They want a weapon. Of course, that's not how Allan puts it, but Ben knows what he means, all the same.

That much was bearable. The trouble was what came after.

_Of course, we'd continue focusing on the development of a cure, but in the meantime - if you're cooperative – we could see about improving your present condition. Expend the necessary resources to make things more comfortable for you. For him, too._

And Ben buries his face in his hands because they _have_ him, after that. Because they won't pitch this scenario to Reed, who's almost blind and barely able to move, who couldn't fight for them even if he wanted to. Reed, who might spend the rest of his life as a curiosity in a dark room, trying and failing to tear himself to pieces.

(On one of the too-short meetings they were allotted, Reed confessed a fantasy of filing his fingers down into more manageable shapes. Ben had no words for that, so he'd just held tighter to Reed's blocky hand in response. Only later did he wonder if Reed had been able to feel the difference.)

Ben knows – Ben _knows_ – once he starts fighting for these people, they lose any incentive to change him back. That they won't disarm themselves by letting him go. If he accepts this deal, they'll help Reed, maybe even fix him, or help him fix himself. He doesn't want to think of what they'll do if he refuses.

It's not a choice he's making, not really.

(It was never supposed to be.)

 

\--

 

The book sits small against Sue's new hands, like a forgotten toy picked up decades too late. It's an outdated textbook, moth-eaten and dull, but it's not as if she's reading it for the content. She's focused on the principle of the thing.

Sue tries once again to articulate her fingers around the edge of a page. Her fingertips are too large to manage it easily, and the edges of them are just rounded enough that the paper slips away most of the time. Still, she keeps at it, adjusting the angles, picking up clumps of pages when she manages to grasp anything at all. She stares at the same paragraphs all the while, reading the same dry lines over and over again. By now, she could recite them in her sleep.

This will be her future, now. A whole lifetime of experiences rendered void by her new body, leaving her to relearn what she can, and mourn the rest.

Sue doesn't eat anymore. None of them do. Johnny had convinced his handlers to let him try, but without a sense of taste the action proved more chore than anything else, and in the end he'd thrown it up undigested. Whatever had collectively turned them to stone also saw fit to remove any need for nutrition, it seemed. Miraculous. Terrible. Just something else that she has to now forget.

At last she manages to capture a single page. Excited, she turns it over with too much force. The page tears, crumpling in her grip, and she lets go as if burned. It falls back into place and for a moment Sue just looks at it before her fist collides with the wall.

It's not that Sue Storm is the kind of person who never gets angry. Before, it was just easier to cover it up, to play the peacemaker, staying even-tempered and cool no matter how dire the circumstances. Now, seeing the cracks spin out like a halo around the crystal of her hand, she feels sick, and then strangely relieved, which is almost worse.

But it gets her to thinking about the straits she's in. About the fist that's closed around all of them, with no real intention of letting them go. She knows there is no world for them outside Area 57, not like this. Allan talks about finding a cure and then immediately changes the subject. If she wants hope, if any of them do, they're going to have to make it for themselves.

Sue smooths out the crumpled page. She gets to her feet.

Outside this room, underneath their confidence and bravado, these people are afraid of her.

Sue thinks it's about time she used it to her advantage.

**Author's Note:**

> this AU is called the quarry AU. why? because everyone is rocks now. 
> 
> anyway I've been wanting to play around with powerswap/"they all get the same powers" scenarios for a while now. my original plan before all of this happened was to do a 4-chapter thing where we cycled through all the options, but it became pretty clear to me that the universe where they all got ben's powers was the most interesting of the bunch. this is because a) ben's powers are Awful to live with and b) ben's powers are the most fun to redesign for other people. 
> 
> the title and the line in the summary are both from the song "body" by mother mother. director's commentary will be posted on my blog within the next few days. mind, this fic got kinda out of hand, so exit wounds part 2 might arrive a bit later than anticipated. sorry bout it.
> 
> (challenge me to a fight at kyakuuu dot tumblr dot com)


End file.
